Grrrrr.... gritty, grimy and grisly...

Three words that quite appropriately describe "The Missionary and the Brute".

I wanted to set this novel - not only in an interesting locale that appealed to me - but also in a harsh natural reality that is unsullied by the nicety of illusory fairy tale optimism. Which is not to say that there is not a ray of hope that runs - sometimes literally - through this story, but rather that it is grounded so much in naturalism that it stays real. Thus giving that fleeting hope more resonance and poignancy.

For me, I view "The Missionary and the Brute" like one of those grand Caravaggio paintings depicting Biblical events. At the time they were painted, to add verisimilitude, Caravaggio reportedly had gravediggers bring him cadavers on which to model his characters. Some of the critics of his day recoiled that he could use the dead to paint images of the Saints, but the depiction of the minutiae of detail such as dirt beneath the fingernails was of such a delicate reality that it - to me (and many others) seemed to lift the artwork to an even higher realm. I got to see his paintings up close once in a traveling exhibit of Vatican artwork - and it blew me away - even moreso than the Michelangelo's or Raphael's that were also displayed. It was one of the great artistic events of my lifetime - right up there with seeing Marcel Marceau perform and hearing Maya Angelou speak.